Edited version of a discussion on THE OTHER FAMILY VIOLENCE by Tom Graves, posted to an email list on 31 May 1996. Links added.

Okay, Gerry, I'll rise to the challenge. In a post indicating (mostly) a welcome return to equalism and a move away from a previously consistently male-focussed/male-blaming stance, Gerry writes:

Stuart wrote: "My query about the "underlying causes of men's violence" referred in part to the sorts of issues we described at the forum as "the other family violence". This is the institutionalised violence against men as seen in the Family Court, in the operation of the Child Support legislation, and numerous other ways."

Are you suggesting that men's violence in certain circumstances is the fault of the family court etc? Isn't this just a way of excusing that violence, of other-blaming?? Tom?? If women are being challenged to take responsibility for their actions why this let-off for men?

In the colloquial understanding of 'fault', the answer to your first question must be 'Yes' - and I believe the current situation in the Family Court must now be blindingly obvious to anyone who's had any observation of its current workings, so I'm somewhat surprised that you even bothered to ask it. The question itself, and the question that immediately follows it, appears to be a way of excusing, or at the least "minimising and denying" (cf. Duluth), a vast amount of perceived abuse against men, by individual women, by their individual and/or generic 'advocates', and by society as a whole acting through the Family Court.

And I fail entirely to see why questioning this abuse should be classed as "a let-off for men"... noone here is doubting men's responsibility, but there seems to be an inordinate amount of effort in some quarters going into doubting women's responsibility, and into creating a "let-off for women"... Why??? What on earth point were you trying to make, Gerry, other than a MASA-style blame-the-victim-as-long-as-it's-male?

Okay, back off, Tom, answer it more formally... :-/ :-}

[A warning: this isn't going to be short - regrettably, to quote Janet McCrickard, "it would take a book at least thrice their respective lengths to even begin to refute and correct the errors and misinformation they contain"...]

1) Misinforming others in order to act out abuse but personally evade responsibility for that abuse is what is called 'third-party abuse'. It arises from a childish combination of cowardice and deceit, common in childhood behaviour - "I'll get my big brother on you!" - but may be carried through into adult behaviour, especially by those whose socialisation incites and/or rewards such behaviour. [Go here for more discussion on this. SB]

2) For genuine reasons, the Family Court acknowledges the reality of familial abuse, particularly against children, and also more recently between spousal partners.

3) For genuine reasons, the Family Court acknowledges the need for an equitable division of assets and responsibilities following a marital separation, especially where children are involved.

[So far, you note, we're strictly gender-neutral. However:]

4) For reasons which are still poorly understood, but which strongly reflect the "social construction" of gender-stereotypes, the Family Court has long tended to operate on a highly gendered approach to the division of responsibilities: women have responsibility for children, and men have responsibility for supporting women and children. As in other social stereotypes (cf. Mother's Day vs. Father's Day cards), women's relationship with children and with others is assumed to be one of love and caring, whilst a father's relationship is assumed to be one of 'duty', with no acknowledgment of emotional or other concerns.

5) The Family Court also has the responsibility of supervising the division of assets following a family breakdown. Its primary concern is with physical assets (property, savings, income); a marital partnership, however, consists of a much broader sharing of 'assets', particularly emotional as well as physical. The stereotype 'traditional marriage' involved the man providing physical/financial support (the 'breadwinner' role) and the woman providing emotional/spiritual support (the 'caregiver' role). Since no acknowledgment is made in the Family Court of the non-physical assets of a partnership, a stereotyped assignment of continuing physical support to the woman whilst making no such provision for the emotional needs of the man will certainly appear as if the Court is condoning a breach of contract by one party (the 'emotional provider') whilst enforcing (or even increasing) the contractual responsibilities on the other party (the 'physical/financial' provider). [Note: this does apply occasionally in the still-rare circumstance of female 'breadwinner' and male 'caregiver' - except that in these cases the Court will often still assign all childcare responsibilities to the woman, sometimes overruling the directly expressed wishes of both parents.] From the man's perspective, he is likely to feel that the Court has exacerbated his already strong feeling of emotional betrayal, and is in effect condoning 'domestic theft' - he is likely to feel abused by the court, yet have no tangible 'evidence' for that abuse.

[Note: so far this has been, at worst, a problem of social stereotypes. However:]

6) Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to portray the problems of child abuse, and more recently spousal abuse, as essentially a male fault (despite considerable factual evidence that indicates that, if we must insist on gender terms, it's more a female fault than a male one). [See here for more on family violence. SB] Considerable amounts of legislation and quasi-legislation (e.g. court instructions, police instructions) have been created - in most cases based on inadequate evidence, and in several cases on known-false 'evidence' - which require all allegations of abuse (not 'some', or 'most', but all - cf. the Australian National Strategy on Violence Against Women, Directive 1.1) to be interpreted in a gendered manner, conforming to socially-perceived but factually incorrect stereotypes of 'male=perpetrator / female=victim'.

7) The Australian Family Court is now instructed, via such legislation and quasi-legislation, to penalise perceived abusers, both in the name of 'protecting children', and in the name of gendered social justice; these penalties can be severe (total exclusion from the life of the children, in alleged child-abuse cases; automatic shift of division of assets from 50:50 to 80:20 plus damages in alleged spousal-abuse cases). There is thus a strong incentive for third-party abuse at legal, financial, emotional and psychological levels, and effective mechanisms through which to carry out such third-party abuse - but mechanisms which are inherently highly biased in favour of women and against men.

8) Although the perjury mechanism, to protect against third-party abuse via the courts, is in place and actively used against men (cf. Brian Easton), these mechanisms do not appear to be applied to any significant degree, or even at all, against women. Chief Justice Nicholson admitted a while back that 55-60% of all allegations by women of child abuse to the Court were "immediately identified" as false, but the Court appears to have taken no action against these false accusations, and in many cases appears to have proceeded as if they were true (on a "where there's smoke there's fire" basis) even if known factually to be false!

9) The Family Court is now (cf. National Strategy on Violence Against Women) required to accept, and apparently willingly accepts, on face value, all statements made by women and/or their advocates, with no mechanisms for cross-check or verification, and a number of mechanisms to prevent such verification (as shown in some of my interviews with men in abusive relationships). In effect, it provides substantial rewards for perjury, especially by women, and substantial mechanisms to support such perjury, but applies no disincentives against such perjury. [The Family Court appears to respond in a similar way to child abuse in the form of parental alienation. See here, for example. SB]

10) As one of these mechanisms, the Court now also accepts the existence of restraining orders, or their equivalent, as proof that abuse existed - even though ROs are issued on ex-parte basis, without any requirement for evidence, and without any requirement for follow-up or verification. ROs were originally intended as an emergency measure; it is now acknowledged that the issuance of an RO to almost any woman who wants one is now routine, especially during family break-up. [See here for some US discussion of this. SB]The impact of an RO on the 'alleged offender', especially in a marital break-up, is severe, almost to extremes; if an RO has been issued on the basis of false or misleading statements (and evidence exists that suggests that this is true not just of 'some', but the vast majority) - or even on the basis of exaggerated emotional perceptions of danger - then the issuing Court is, in effect, acting out third-party abuse, and actively condoning such abuse. There is still no apparent redress, in any court, for damages incurred from an RO issued on the basis of false, misleading or mistaken allegations.

To sum up: the Family Court acts out third-party abuse in many forms, and at many levels (legal, financial, emotional, etc.), almost all of them specifically targeted at men. Men have little or no legal or other protection against such abuse; no redress against such abuse; and are often explicitly and intentionally excluded (as 'punishment' for a 'crime' which they did not in fact commit) from any means of support (e.g. counselling) by which they could recover from such abuse. It is a serious problem: and because of its circular, self-referential nature, with most safety devices explicitly locked out (Chernobyl-style!), it is one that is rapidly getting worse.

An inherent problem of abuse is that the abused person may seek to 'export' their pain, to another person, or to another aspect of self. Where it is re-imported to self - e.g. in self-blame - it is likely to result in suicide: Paul Augustson in Perth commented that local statistics indicate that the Family Court there alone accounts for one male suicide a week [and see here for more Australian information. SB]... but strangely enough, there seems to be little or no social concern about this type of abuse by men... There may be an attempt to export the pain to others and self, as in murder-suicide: Chief Justice Nicholson recently attempted to deny this particular link to the Family Court, and to blame solely the men concerned, but did so with way-out-of-date data... Social concern seems only to arise when men attempt to export their pain to others - or rather, only when they attempt to export their pain back to women, and especially to the person they (often correctly) perceive as being the primary agent of their abuse. To acknowledge only the abuse done by men in these circumstances, and to deny the part played either by their partners, by their advocates or by the Court - especially where false or misleading statements were made - is, in the terms of Duluth, "minimising, denying and blaming", and is legally a criminal act of abuse.

There is no excuse for abuse or violence, by anyone, to anyone, ever. (I hope that's agreed by everyone?) The law - in principle at least - requires everyone to be 'responsible' for their behaviour, even in the face of any amount of abuse.

Hence there is no excuse for abuse or violence by men in response to third-party abuse or violence. Neither is there any excuse for gender-based abuse by the Family Court or any other court, or for third-party abuse by women and their advocates. Nor is there any excuse for "minimising, denying and blaming" as a way of evading social and/or individual responsibility in and for such abuse. (Hence there is no excuse for the third-party abuse implicit in your comments above, Gerry: that's central in what now follows, and it's essential that you face it, and that we do likewise for the abuses we condone.)

Abuse exists. It is a problem; but other than in a idealistic, impossible world - where all persons are perfectly 'in control' and 'response-able' at all times, regardless of illness, injury or any other factor - it is and will always be a fact of life. (The law acknowledges that there are conditions under which individuals may not be able to be responsible: it is disturbing that this acknowledgment is becoming increasingly gender-specific, with increasing denial of women's responsibility [cf. report in yesterday's paper about woman who embezzled c.$200,000 from her employer, but given zero-sentence 'because she did it for love'] but increasing insistence on men's responsibility even for their own partner's behaviour [cf. US case of man convicted of rape on woman with undiagnosed multiple-personality syndrome, because only the personality active at the time had (very actively and explicitly) agreed to sex...])

Hence there is a need for understanding - a compassionate understanding - of abuse and violence by self and by others: otherwise we will be unable, as a society or as individuals, to do anything about it.

Hence there is a need for societal and individual mechanisms for individuals to safely recover from abuse, without attempting to export their pain to others, or to inflict further abuse on themselves.

Hence there is a need to assist each other in the development of individual and social 'response-ability' - with an acknowledgment that we and others, for a variety of reasons, may not always be able to respond in a 'responsible' manner. (The genuine 'victim' state is when someone is not able to respond; as soon as that person is able to respond in a socially responsible manner, they have legal 'response-ability' and to continue a 'victim' stance in that state - attempting to offload responsibility to others - is an act of abuse and/or self-abuse. Where such an abusive state is actively condoned - as in 'victim feminism' and its legal results - it is a socially-constructed and socially-maintained form of self-abuse and third-party abuse.)

There is no excuse for what Stuart described as "the other family violence". There is a need to understand it - understand its sources, and the sexist stereotypes that feed and maintain it - in order to bring it under social control, as a matter of urgent social priority - otherwise the Court will continue to be exacerbating, rather than reducing, the overall problem of social and familial violence and abuse. There is a need to take action to minimise such abuse: we could suggest, for example, that the penalty for perjury or attempted perjury should be, as a minimum, the equivalent of the potential gains; and given that it appears, as one Adelaide solicitor I spoke recently commented, for it to be rare for any statement from some 'women's advocates' to not be a perjury, it would seem that there is an urgent need for at least some 'exemplary' prosecutions to be carried out...

There is also an urgent social need for societal and individual mechanisms to assist men in recovering from "the other family violence". Yet it is noteworthy that there are, at present, no state-funded support services overtly available for such abused men; and also that many supposed 'mens-groups' nominally concerned with these issues, such as MASA, seem interested only in blaming men for those abuses, and exacerbating abuses which they (e.g. MASA) have in effect actively condoned... There is an urgent need to face these issues, because the problem of abuse by males is increasing, and will continue to increase, until the present obsessional social cowardice of male-blame is brought to a cease, and genuine social justice at least seen to be striven for.

And there is a real concern that the continued insistent denial of women's legal responsibility will end up causing a reversion in women's legal status to that of a child - in other words the same as back in the 1850s. A lot of work has been done to end that injustice: we don't really want to have to do it all over again...

It's an old, old problem with an ugly name: sexism. It's a problem which always goes both ways; it's unfortunate that those who make the most noise about supposed 'sexism' these days - though a noticeably one-way perception of sexism - tend to be those who are the worst offenders, and its most evident beneficiaries, but historically that's nothing new...

But what are you doing to face such sexism, Gerry? From the rest of your posting, you're at least aware of some of the issues; but in your evident failure to grasp the seriousness of "the other family violence", and in your apparent reflexive male-blame in response, you would still seem to have a long way to go before you can genuinely support true social justice in acknowledging that "the needs, concerns, feelings and fears of men and of women are of exactly equal value and importance".

So in return for my response to your challenge, I offer a question to you: what do you do to assist men (and, for that matter, women) in recovering from "the other family violence"? What will you do to reduce your undoubtedly unintentional but unfortunately - as indicated by your comments above - all too real condoning of "the other family violence"?

Over to you...

- tom g.

31 May, 1996

Prepared for the WWW by Stuart Birks

13 June, 1996